Author: admin

Thank goodness for my friend, whose name I won’t reveal, as she is the one doing my grocery shopping and delivering the bags to the house which I share with one other family. My regular visit to WalMart? No way – large numbers of people in one place are too attractive to poorly trained guys […]

This essay was inspired by a brilliant book with a quirky, but accurate title:  “One Day, Everyone will have always been against this.” Published in 2025, the author is Omar El Akkad. ** Lacking the requisite skills, I have made no attempt to differentiate speech patterns among the various participants in this essay. The setting is ordinary: […]

Let’s say that Bill, Richard, Joe and Tom –average white Americans — had dinner at Bill’s house. They are polishing off a slice of chocolate cake with their coffee and for some inexplicable reason (or perhaps there was a television talking head in the background) the conversation moved past football and the cost of living to that of immigration. The first result of that shift was that Tom immediately […]

Fiction; written in 2025 pre-the ascendancy of Trump, by an Anglo Friend In 1990, my father Carlos came to the United States from Colombia. As we say within the family or with trusted friends, “he took the scenic route.” Like the vast majority of those attracted to this country for many years, Carlos wanted to work and save enough money to bring my mom Angela and my sister Maria north to live with […]

It is not possible to be calm The subject of immigration always has enough moving parts to fill an entire shelf of books at my favorite café, aka Barnes & Noble. Nonetheless, in the current environment, attempting to persuade kangaroos to march in line is easier than writing a cogent, comprehensive, readableessay about immigration, the initial challenge being the selection of focus. Should it […]

Why are there two police cars with flashing lights outside the restaurant where I am interacting with people applying for assistance from our Emergency Relief Fund (ERF)?  Are they interested locally or are they coordinating with ICE? The latter was in town two days before, at a laundromat and adjacent convenience store. Fortunately, they are not curious about the group directly visible inside the location, a gathering […]

It is a standard question, often dominating political discourse, only taking a rear seat wheninternational escapades and domestic corruption are the front-page stories. In any case, the question occurred to me when I saw ICE forcibly apprehend the guy who hadrecently done my roof. Carlos had fixed the roofs for many in the area, for […]